28 Tim Winter
conditions through stilts and carefully positioned windows that avoided the path
of the sun (Vann 2003). Like other architects of this period, he looked to those
forms of cooling found in the country’s vernacular architectural heritage. In
Sri Lanka, Geoffrey Bawa’s architecture became renowned for seamless flows
between indoor and outdoor spaces and the incorporation of vegetation as an
agent of cooling. From domestic homes with inner courtyards to hotels, schools,
and churches, Bawa’s designs were oriented by shade, water, air-flow, and the
rhythms of the day and seasons. Such buildings represented the accumulation of
a deep knowledge about building for the climatic conditions of the tropics that
became popular across South and Southeast Asia in the decades leading up to
widespread adoption of affordable air conditioning (Fry and Drew 1964; Fathy,
Shearer, and Sultān 1986; Ford et al. 1998).
Of course, it was an approach that extended far beyond the practices of the
region’s iconic architects, with cities throughout tropical and subtropical Asia
characterized by buildings oriented around their localized climatic conditions:
a building stock that many contemporary architects and owners are now looking
to for renovations and redevelopment through adaptive reuse. In cities such as
Penang, Melaka, Phnom Penh, and Singapore, the shophouse typology of the late
nineteenth, early twentieth centuries has proved popular for creating renovations
that utilize airflow, internal courtyards, ponds, and overhanging rooflines (Yung
2014). In the tourism sector, the legacy of Geoffrey Bawa is still apparent in both
the hotels and resorts he designed and those he inspired. Bawa designed resorts in
Sri Lanka, Bali, and India, all of which featured long, open, naturally ventilated
corridors, bungalows with courtyards and pools, as well as an abundance of
vegetation and outdoor dining and seating spaces (Jazeel 2007). It is a design
language that has been widely adopted across the region, with numerous high-end
hotel and resort groups charging a premium for an accommodation and dining
experience that features greenery and the fresh air that comes from an architecture
that reduces the boundaries between indoor and outdoor space. Likewise in
Malaysia, the architectural practice of Seksan Design has also designed smaller
hotel properties using disused sheds, old buildings, and tiny houses. As part of
the open-plan design narrative, Ng Seksan has sought to encapsulate a sense of
local identity by promoting a Malaysian vernacular within a wider framework
of environmental and social sustainability (Azizan 2012). It can be argued with
some confidence that such initiatives—together with other forms of restoration,
renovation, and conservation that allow the ongoing use of buildings of a pre-
air-con era—hold real potential for countering the distinct trend toward rapidly
increasing energy consumption associated with indoor comfort in countries such
as Malaysia today. However, while fully acknowledging the benefit of these
architectural based approaches, the critical point I wish to make here is that as
the basis of a sustainability discourse, their potential as a large-scale alternative to
the “hegemony” of AC is very limited. In order to activate a wider debate about
indoor comfort, I would argue we need to see such architectural design as one
part of a wider effort of sustaining tradition-based low-carbon comfort practices.
One of the effects of electronic air conditioning is its transformative affect on